Right now I’m sitting on the steps outside the caravan and eating cereal in a sunny Spain! However, 7 degrees Celsius now at 10 am. But it is nice! We slipped over the border yesterday evening. The days before has been, to say the least long and provided us with pains here and there. But we got to see three countries in one day! Here’s how it went:

Tuesday.

We drove away from our truck stop in Germany, the air was very crisp as it had rained during the night. Felt like a nice spring day in Sweden, about 10 degrees Celsius. Our first stop for food was at McDonalds, happened to order us plus menus but the young guy working there was good at English anyway. We drove from Jüchen to Aachen to cross over to Belgium. Cozy country with many small villages. Mountainous and curvy! It was not easy with a large caravan. Went through La Roche-en-Ardenne and it did not happen so much in Belgium, we just wanted to drive through the country quick. We checked the map and found a road without a border checkpoint, sounds like we are real smugglers. So we got ourselves up higher and higher on a mountain and the road was so narrow! How will this go we thought? But the creepy forest road led us onto the French highway. We took the back door to France haha. We arrived in Reims, found the next Mcdonald’s and thought ” oh well, we need to try the French one also. Jase got a hot dog, which was much appreciated. We drove a few miles and found an okay place at an industrial park in Sezanne and slept there.

Wednesday.

Woke up to a sunny France, how wonderful it felt. Now we were on a road. So driving in France was easy and we saw many beautiful places. Big meadows and vineyards. Old stone houses and cosy villages. Stopped at a parking place along the road and rested, ate a little and enjoyed the nice weather. 13 degrees Celsius. Crazy that it was spring/summer in just a few days for us. In La Commodité we were called by radio Halmstad for an interview about our trip. It’s fun that people are interested! Link to Peter’s video of the interview will in the next post. We ate along the way where we had a nice field outside of the window, smelled a bit of manure outside but we got our appetite back inside!

Stopped at a Super U in Vierzon and bought a classic baguette. Baby wipes, of course, so we keep ourselves clean, it is a different life to live on the road. Found our place in Champniers where we slept very good.

Thursday.

Today was the day. The day when we would get into our goal-country of Spain. We had 40 miles to the border. Drove through some small French villages and saw the mountains on the horizon. They were huge, and we would drive past them. It started, of course, to get dark outside when we approached the mountains and the roads became narrow and crooked. The cars we met drove like maniacs and it started to rain. I felt that I led us out on a bad road that we could not make a turn on. We came closer and closer to the border, and we met fewer cars. The border was not easy to see in the forest but we crossed over to Spain without problems, we thought. Drove up and down between the mountains and the small villages until we came out onto a major road. Found a gas station and thought we would fill up the tank. It looked a bit different, all the gas stations we have been to has worked in various ways. When we are sitting in our car and thinking if we were going to fill up the border police showed up. They check us out and got out of the car. Hell. What are they going to find now that is not okay. Are we missing any paperwork? They were nice and wanted to check our passports and a bit in the car. We were more nervous now than when we were about to miss the boat, I just want to add. Not that we had anything illegal with us, but we were missing some papers on the car that was left in Sweden.

The police gave us tips on where we could eat and sleep last night, so it was not so dangerous as we thought. But our route into Spain was not as easy as we had hoped. It is thus not possible to sneak into Spain. Now we know. Our night stay we found along the way in Olite. A parking place along the highway. Everything feels so scary and uncertain when it is dark outside and you do not know where you park really. The traffic outside disturbed me a lot but I fell asleep at last. What a day it was.